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<\/p>\nPenny Mordaunt ripped into the SNP’s “appalling legacy” in a brutal Commons takedown.<\/p>\n
The Commons Leader took aim at the nationalist party’s record, including its support for drug consumption rooms.<\/p>\n
Ms Mordaunt was responding to SNP Commons Leader Deidre Brock, who mocked her speech at the Conservative Party conference in which she urged the party faithful to “stand up and fight”.<\/p>\n
The senior Conservative MP said: “I’m not in any doubt who I’m standing up and fighting for – the people of this country – and who I’m standing up and fighting against, and the SNP are on that latter list.”<\/p>\n
Ms Mordaunt called on Ms Brock to be a “little more self-reflective”, adding “She likes to lecture my party about values.<\/p>\n
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“I’ll just ask her, which party is it whose leader smirked whilst people booed the national anthem?<\/p>\n
“Whose party is it whose activists called BBC reporters ‘traitors’?<\/p>\n
“Whose party is it that bullied Conservative Party members attending a conference in Scotland to the extent that it made national news?<\/p>\n
“Whose party is it whose behaviour was so horrific towards its own elected representatives that they said they suffered panic attacks and some of them have crossed the floor?<\/p>\n
“And who is it that is responsible for the bile-fuelled rants that are so evident in Hansard?<\/p>\n
“Once she has clocked that all these things are her party, she might reflect on why that is the case and the appalling legacy that such a warped, irresponsible displacement activity has ceded to a generation of Scottish children.<\/p>\n
“A wrecked education system, a widening attainment gap, fewer teachers, maths scores declining in every Pisa survey, science at a low record and plummeting literacy rates.<\/p>\n
“But they will have, of course, somewhere safe and warm in which to take heroin.<\/p>\n
“I’m not going to take any lectures from her about values, responsibility or performance in office.<\/p>\n
“This is why I will get up every week and stand up and fight against the sloppy-shouldered separatism evidenced by the SNP.”<\/p>\n
Ms Brock had earlier said: “Things became a bit clearer for us all this week. For a time we’d been wondering what the Leader meant when she delivered her infamous stand-up and fight battle cry.<\/p>\n
“She told us 12 times in 90 seconds that she wanted to have a fight with somebody but we weren’t quite sure who the enemy in her head was.<\/p>\n
“We know in Scotland she likes having a fight with us, she’s always telling us off for disobedience or treachery. In Tory Britain, we Scots should know our place.<\/p>\n
“But the Chancellor helpfully revealed who else her Government wants a fight with. If you’re unable to work because of ill health, get ready for battle with the Tories.<\/p>\n
“If you’re amongst the four million families destitute in the UK, forget it, no real help for you in your daily struggle to survive.<\/p>\n
“And it’s clear from the Covid inquiry if you’re a scientist or, God forbid, an actual expert, gird your loins.<\/p>\n
“In England, Tories fight NHS workers, they fight teachers, they fight local councils, they fight the low paid. If you’re on pensions or benefits, sure they threw you a few crumbs yesterday from the table but the Office for National Statistics says food prices are 30 percent higher than they were two years ago so they will fight you at the checkout tills.<\/p>\n
“Not a word about fighting billionaires’ tax evasion, or fighting dirty money being laundered through London, or fighting corruption and fraud drenching this Government in sleaze.”<\/p>\n
Mr Brock demanded for an independent Scotland to be free of the “bedlam” of Westminster, before asking: “Isn’t it time her profligate Government stopped fighting everybody, held an inquiry into itself and the many billions it has squandered over the last four years?”<\/p>\n